Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 01, 2016

03/01 Links Pt2: The BDS Movement Isn’t Working; The country BDS doesn’t want Oscar winners to see

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Time to draw lines and defend them

Everyone – including Ahmadinejad – has a right to voice their position on the issue. Moreover, Bollinger indicated through his action, America’s greatest universities have a duty to confer legitimacy and grant a prestigious venue to Ahmadinejad to air his genocidal position.
After Columbia gave legitimacy to a man who seeks to murder every Jew, how could anyone object to anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate groups merely insisting that the US end all assistance and support for Israel? How could it be illegitimate to blame Israel for the suffering of the Palestinians? How could it be illegitimate to teach Jewish kindergarteners that there is something intrinsically hurtful about the map of the Jewish state when a Jewish university president invited a man who called for that state to be wiped of the map to speak to his students? Last week Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan held a “top secret” conference for Jewish leaders from around the world to develop strategies and action plans to fight BDS.
Pollster Frank Luntz reportedly shared with the 150 conference participants the dismal results of a survey he had taken of American Jewish university students.
According to Luntz, only 42 percent of American Jewish students surveyed said that Israel wants peace.
A mere 31% of the students believe that Israel is a democracy.
According to media accounts, the Strategic Affairs Ministry set out what its experts believe is the sort of language pro-Israel activists should use to counter BDS propaganda. The language, participants were told, should be inclusive, not condemnatory.
For instance, people opposing BDS should say, “Boycotts divide people, and that’s part of the problem, not the solution.”
On the other hand, it would be a big mistake to say, “The BDS movement is not about legitimate criticism. It’s about making Israel illegitimate.”
It’s hard to escape the sense that in advocating these slogans, the government has missed the point, and the boat.
You can’t engage people who believe you are evil.

The BDS Movement Isn’t Working

The BDS movement in the United States seeks, as it does in other nations, to make Israel into a pariah state. How is it doing? The most recent Gallup report, which includes its 2016 results as well as some numbers from prior years, is one indication that BDS is failing here.
In 2005, when the most recent wave of boycott activity commenced, Gallup asked survey respondents: “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or with the Palestinians? 52 percent sympathized more with Israel, 18 percent more with the Palestinians. More than ten years of relentless campaigning against Israel later, and 62 percent sympathize more with Israel, 15 percent more with the Palestinians.
What about Democratic support for Israel? As is well known, there has been a growing gap between Republicans and Democrats on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, Democrats are not only an audience for BDS but also an audience for the Obama administration’s complaints about the present administration in Israel. Yet the gap was greater in 2005 than it is today and at 53 percent, the percentage of Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians is much better than the 41 percent recorded in 2005.
But the young have been special targets of the BDS movement, treated every year to Israel apartheid week, struggles against Zionist hummus, and divestment campaigns. Indeed, young people have been less sympathetic than older people to Israel in the recent past. Nonetheless, this year, 54 percent reported sympathizing more with Israel; 23 percent sympathized more with the Palestinians. In 2005, 51 percent reported sympathizing more with Israel. It’s true that sympathy with the Palestinians was considerably lower in that age group in 2005, in the neighborhood of 17 percent. But it had been at 29 percent just a year before. In short, the BDSers have not been able to budge opinion among the young so far.
What if we ask the question a different way? Gallup also asks whether respondents view Israel favorably or unfavorably. This year, 71 percent of American surveyed viewed Israel favorably or very favorably. In 2005 that number was 69 percent. Although Israel’s favorability ratings are off of their 25 year high — 79 percent viewed Israel favorably during the first Persian Gulf War — they are otherwise about the highest they have been during the past 25 years.

History’s Role in the War on Jews

For those who know little about what happens to Jews when they don’t have power, the creation of Israel and its continued importance doesn’t resonate. If you judge Israel solely by a measure of whether it is uniformly perfect as opposed to the context of a war with Palestinians who will not recognize its legitimacy no matter where its borders are drawn, you may be inclined to view it as worthy of being as branded a pariah state. The calls for economic warfare being voiced by groups like Jewish Voices for Peace or for its dismantling by that group’s leftist allies can be seductive when you not only don’t understand that Jews have rights to the country but also that when Jews are left powerless and at the mercy of other peoples, the result is, as Schama notes, a legacy of horror.
The point here is that those who wish to speak up for Israel need to understand that it is only historical ignorance and willful blindness that can cause us to fail to notice that those who wish to deny Jews the rights to statehood and self-defense — rights that are not denied any other people — are engaging in an act of bias that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. While academic anti-Zionists see themselves as promoting a point of view that is distinct from those who are killing Jews in the streets of Paris or Jerusalem, they are, in effect, attempting to provide the killers with a moral legitimacy they don’t deserve.
As Schama observes, in the end, Zionism is the “prize whipping boy” of intellectual in the post-colonial era in search of a scapegoat. Such crusades, he says, always require a villain, and we know who will always play that role in the European imagination. If we are to ensure that this same contagion of hate doesn’t spread any further in the United States, it will take not merely a generation armed with the facts and historical knowledge needed to answer the false charges of the Israel-haters. It will also require the moral courage to oppose the intellectual fashions of our day that will enable us to stand up to the intellectual anti-Zionists call them by their right name: anti-Semites.

Israeli media reported this, but for some reason the Western media didn't pick this fairly momentous story.

Luckily, we have Hizballah's Al Manar:

Israeli channel 10 reported that a senior Israeli delegation visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in the last few weeks.

The Israeli channel meanwhile, said that the delegation was headed by a prominent Israeli official.Moshe Yaalon and Turki al-Faisal shake hands

The visit was not the first one to the Kingdom, but the Israeli Military Censor prohibits the reports talking about such visits, according to Channel 10.

King Salman Bin Abdulaziz and the Saudi princes are not ashamed by the Israeli ties. However, they prefer they remain confidential, the report added.

Meanwhile, the Israeli channel 10 quoted Saudi officials as saying during the meetings that they are not interested in solving the Palestinian cause. However they want the Zionist entity to stand by Saudi against Iran.

I couldn't find it on Channel 10 but it was reported here. (h/t Yoel) And, of course, in Iran.

If this is true, it is awesome. If it is not true, the fact that it is being reported by Iranian proxies is awesome anyway.

And either way, it supports the old joke of why Jews read antisemitic newspapers - because they are filled with good news!

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Harold Benjamin Soref was a British businessman, polemicist, and politician notable for his forcefully expressed right-wing views. “Pudgy, grumpy, brisk, Jewish” is how the journalist Andrew Roth, in Parliamentary Profiles, summed him up. It was an apt description.

Born in London on 18 December 1916, Harold Soref was the youngest child and only son (there were also two daughters) of Romanian-born Rhodesian pioneer Paul Soref, co-founder of Soref Brothers, South African shippers, and the former Zelma Goodman, English-born of German-Jewish ancestry. Brought up in leafy Hampstead, Harold attended the Hall School (a local preparatory school) before going on to one of Britain’s best-known public schools, St Paul’s School, where he was a day boy. There, with right-wing political sensibilities that awakened early, he was president of the Chesterton Society – the writer G.K. Chesterton, who died in 1936, was a former pupil of the school – and editor of its magazine. In 1934 Soref attended Oswald Mosley’s Olympia Rally as a standard bearer for the Junior Imperial League. When, however, he heckled an antisemitic speaker he was manhandled by Blackshirt thugs, and evicted.

During the Second World War he served briefly in the Royal Scots and then in the Intelligence Corps, based for much of the time in southern Africa, a region he grew to know exceedingly well: although his paternal grandparents had remained in Romania his father had family members in Bulawayo.

Soref read history at Queen’s College, Oxford, but did not stay the course, so did not obtain a degree. Nevertheless, a deep interest in history was innately ingrained in him, and he went on to contribute a number of well-researched and well-written articles on aspects of Anglo-Jewish history to various periodicals, and was very much involved, in 1956, in the commemorative celebrations of the resettlement of Jews in England. He was a close friend of the great Anglo-Jewish historian Cecil Roth.

From 1947 until 1951 he edited the Anglo-Jewish Association’s organ The Jewish Monthly. The AJA, to give the Association its accepted abbreviation, consisted of latter day “Englishmen of the Mosaic persuasion” and their attitude to political Zionism reflected that fact. Some of what Soref wrote during his years as editor now sounds reprehensible – perverse is perhaps a better word – but, with another future MP, Neville Sandelson, he visited Israel soon after its foundation, had pro-Zionist relatives, and to his credit eventually adopted a pro-Israel position. His initial opposition to the Zionist cause had as much to do with perceptions that the Jewish State would be an instrument of the Soviet Union as with his old-fashioned fears of the spectre of “dual loyalties” and all that that entailed for the comfort and status of Diaspora communities like his own.

03/01 Links Pt1: Benny Morris: The Mideast Peace Process's Biggest Myth; The Syria “Cease Fire”

From Ian:

Benny Morris: The Mideast Peace Process's Biggest Myth

Benjamin Netanyahu and his relationship with assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin continue to arouse controversy in Israel. Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, recounted in January on an episode of PBS’s Frontline, “Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral. . . . I remember Netanyahu saying to me: ‘Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.’” Netanyahu’s office denied that he said it.
Last November was the twentieth anniversary of the assassination of Rabin. It remains a contentious date in Israeli history. The occasion was accompanied by the publication of several works, most notably by former Newsweek Jerusalem bureau chief Dan Ephron’s Killing a King and a documentary by one of Israel’s leading filmmakers, Amos Gitai, Rabin, the Last Day. A major question raised by both was whether Middle Eastern history, including Israeli-Palestinian relations, would have developed in a radically different direction had Rabin lived. It boiled down to whether the assassination had aborted a peace process that would or could have culminated in a historic peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and, by extension, the Arab world as a whole.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: We Want Our Own Knesset

Apparently Najat Abu Bakr forgot that she is a member of the Palestinian parliament and not the Israeli one. She and her colleagues have no right to criticize President Abbas or any senior official in Ramallah. Such criticism is considered an "insult" to top officials and even an act of treason.
And so we have two legislators. One is forced to seek shelter within her own parliament for fear of being arrested by the Palestinian security forces. The other receives all the rights and privileges enjoyed by her fellow Arabs inside Israel -- in spite of her immensely provocative behavior.
That is the difference between a law-abiding country and the Palestinian Authority, which has been functioning for many years as a mafia.
Najat Abu Bakr and many Palestinians dream of the day they too will have a Knesset, a true parliament, where leaders are held accountable.

IDF rescues two soldiers from massive Kalandiya riot; 5 troops wounded

The IDF and the Border Police launched a dramatic rescue operation to extract two Oketz K-9 unit soldiers who accidentally strayed into the Palestinian Kalandiya neighborhood north of Jerusalem on Monday night, and found themselves in the midst of a massive riot, which later turned into a gun battle between Palestinian gunmen and security forces.
Palestinian sources said two Kalandiya residents were killed in the fire exchange. Israeli sources said they knew of one Palestinian gunmen who was shot dead, after he fired on, and struck, a Border Police officer in the knee.
A total of five Israeli security personnel were injured in the clashes; four lightly, and the fifth, the wounded Border Policeman, was listed by doctors at Hadassah University Medical Center on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus as being in moderate condition.
An army source said the incident began at around 10:50 p.m. on Monday night, when the vehicle carrying both soldiers entered Kalandiya.
"We don't yet fully understand how it got there. The soldiers became surrounded in a very big riot, with many rocks thrown at their vehicle. They continued driving, and then Molotov cocktails were thrown at them, setting the vehicle on fire," the source said.
At that stage, the soldiers escaped their vehicle and split up.
IDF Central Command dispatched large numbers of forces to Kalandiya to rescue the soldiers. One maintained cell phone contact with the army throughout the incident, and was rescued within 30 minutes as he hid in a yard. The second soldier was rescued shortly before midnight from the settlement of Kochav Yaakov.

FBI puts tiny, dormant Jewish terror group in same league as ISIS, Al Qaeda (update)

This is a screenshot from the FBI's "Don't Be a Puppet" website, aimed at dissuading teens from joining terror groups online.

It lists six of the 50+ US-designated terror organizations. As examples, they chose Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hizballah, ISIS, Kahane Chai and FARC.

I'm no fan of Kahane Chai, but including a tiny group - with less than 100 members according to the State Department and no major terror attacks in two decades - together with terror groups that have killed tens of thousands of people - is offensive.

Obviously, the thinking is that the FBI doesn't want the teens reading the site to associate terror with Islamic groups. FARC has claimed thousands of victims, but Kahane Chai? It hasn't been responsible in 30 years for as many deaths as each of the other groups have done in a single day!

Is Kahane Chai recruiting American teens over the Internet? Not that I have heard of. They don't even have a domain name or dedicated website as far as I can tell.

The inclusion of Kahane Chai in this list might be meant to forestall Islamophobia, but all it does is create a false equivalence between major terror groups and a tiny Jewish groups specifically to give the young readers the message that Jews can be terrorists too, just like Muslims.

This is technically accurate and fundamentally a slander.

As far as the US designated terror groups are concerned, there is literally no reason for Kahane Chai to even be on the list nowadays. I recently mentioned the DFLP group which has been actively recruiting members and encouraging attacks on Jews. Today.

But the DFLP was dropped from the State Department list of terror groups because they have not been associated with any fatal attacks lately.

Similarly, Fatah is not designated as a terror group on that list, This is even though that group has fired rockets on Israeli civilians as recently as 2014.

I would bet that Kahane Chai is an order of magnitude smaller than every single other group on the list.

The State Department and the FBI, in their zeal to appear evenhanded, create completely different standards to include a token, dormant Jewish terror group among the dozens of far larger Muslim terror groups.

There is something very wrong here, sacrificing Jews on the altar of political correctness.

(h/t Irene)

UPDATE: It seems likely that the reason the Kahane Chai group was added was because Muslims objected to an earlier version of the site they previewed as being Islamophobic. (h/t NancyB)

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Last week, Iran promised to pay $7000 cash to families of every terrorist killed by Israel and $30,000 more if Israel demolishes their homes, effectively creating a life insurance policy for terrorists. (After all, Iran has lots of discretionary funds lately.)

The PLO is outraged!

They don't have a problem with the morality of paying to support terror, though. They are upset because Iran refuses to send them the money to distribute, and instead wants to pay the terror families directly:

The Palestinian Authority criticized Iran on Saturday for comments made by its parliament international advisor, who said Iran would send funds to Palestinians families through its own channels rather than through the PA.

Earlier on Saturday, Hussein Sheikh al-Islam was quoted by website al-Resalah as saying that "experience has proven that the [Palestinian] Authority is not reliable, so Tehran will send the money in its own way."

"Unfortunately, donations that were sent to the Authority did not reach the right people," al-Islam said.

Palestinian Presidency Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said it would have been better for Iran to officially transfer the funds to the PA’s organizations, instead of sending them through "twisted ways and illegitimate means."

The criticism is mounting.

As Iran started setting up a mechanism to have families apply for funding via a website, more Fatah officials are expressing their anger at not getting a cut.

The Secretary-General of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front and member of the Executive Committee of the PLO Ahmad Majdalani said,"We welcome the support of Arab, Islamic and friendly foreign countries to help Palestinians in general, and the families of martyrs, prisoners and the wounded in particular, but it must pass through the formal means and legitimacy," stressing that the PLO is the sole and legitimate representative of Palestinians and therefore all money should funnel through them. he called the Iranian plan "an affront to the dignity of the Palestinian nation and our martyrs."

Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Front and a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO Abu Yousef said that the PLO would "refuse to subdue the blood of martyrs and the suffering of the prisoners and the wounded to the visions and goals of other political interests."

He said there are lots of existing committees and official bodies and associations that specialize in distribution of cash to the families of the "martyrs" that funds should funnel through.

Executive Committee of the PLO member Mahmoud Ismail said Iran's quest to provide funds for the families of the "martyrs" and the prisoners through unofficial routes is proof that they do not want to support the Palestinian people.

Secretary-General of the Palestinian Arab Front Jamil Shehadeh said "Iranian officials statements (about the lack of transparency under the PA) is an affront to the PA and the PLO."

Talal Abu Zarifa of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine saw the proposal as an insult to the martyrs of Palestine the national struggle.

This is a bigger story than just a dispute between Iran and the PLO.

On the one hand we have Iran that wants to reward terrorists. And on the other hand we have the "moderate" and internationally approved Palestinian Authority that also wants to reward terrorists - and to skim some of the "martyr" funds for themselves.

And both sides get billions of dollars from the moral Western world so they can fight over who can bankroll terror more.

You know, the billions of dollars that are supposed to influence them away from supporting terror.

Perhaps it is time to rethink the policy of sending lots of money to those who proudly fight over paying terrorists?

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McGraw-Hill college textbook includes "The Map That Lies" (updated)

This is the cover of the McGraw Hill textbook "Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World"

Here is a scan of page 123. The book republished the propaganda poster of The Map That Lies!

The same lies are repeated here. To recap:

Map 1: calling public lands that made up far more than half the total land "Palestinian land" while Jewish lands are only the privately owned Jewish lands. "Palestine" was the entire British mandate, no one called the Arabs "Palestinians."

Map 2: A partition plan that never materialized because Arabs tried to throw the Jews into the sea. Again, no one called the Arabs "Palestinians" so the failed partition was not between Jewish land and "Palestinian" land.

Map 3: Land controlled by Egypt and Jordan, without any objection by the Arab residents, is falsely called "Palestinian land." No, it was Jordanian annexed and Egyptian controlled. (Of course, Arab communities in Israel are not called out.)

Map 4: The borders must be decided between the two sides, but even Israel's government doesn't call all the white areas "Israeli land." And the Palestinian land, is the first example of an autonomous area under Palestinian Arab control in history - something that Israel gave up for peace. The amount of "Palestinian land" hasn't shrunk - it was created for the first time ever.

Calling the four maps "stages" is even more offensive, as if this was a Jewish plot from the start to steal "Palestinian" land and force them out. Israel has given up land for peace since 1967, in the Sinai, Gaza, part of Judea and Samaria and southern Lebanon. Calling these four maps "stages" - especially when map 2 never existed in reality - is anti-Israel propaganda. And McGraw-Hill cannot blame the source for that - their stated source does not use the word "stages" in their version.

The text also refers to the security barrier as if its route is shown in the maps.

It isn't. The authors did zero fact checking. (The previous page says that the Six Day War forced a mass exodus of Palestinians, causing them to become a stateless nation. In fact, there was no forced expulsion in 1967 and the timeframes are completely wrong by any standard.)

I once made a more accurate map:

That shows how Israel keeps trying to give up real land for peace. And it has offered a great deal more for peace with the Palestinians. The book could have gone into why they continuously reject these peace offers...but it chose not to.

The textbook authors have taken a false narrative and are teaching it to students across the nation.

McGraw Hill must be held accountable for pushing such propaganda in college classrooms. The email address for their customer services is hep_customer-service@mheducation.com; let me know how they respond.

Hat tip to David Abrams of the Zionist Advocacy Center in New York (and who has been featured here before).

UPDATE: See here.

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Palestinian ambassador to North Korea praises its leaders as "brilliant, devoted to freedom"

From the official website of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un:

Ismail Ahmed Mohamed Hasan, Palestinian ambassador to the DPRK, hosted a reception at his embassy on Friday on the occasion of the birth anniversary of leader Kim Jong Il.

Present there on invitation were Yang Hyong Sop, vice-president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, and officials concerned.

The ambassador said in his speech that Kim Jong Il's revolutionary career is an outstanding example as a state leader possessed of brilliant idea and creative caliber. He devoted himself to the freedom of the country and its people's happiness and the victory of the oppressed people's struggle, the ambassador noted, adding:

The Korean people are making a fresh leap and innovations in all fields for building socialist economic construction under the leadership of Marshal Kim Jong Un who is leading the all-out advance for building a thriving nation as the successor to the cause of President Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

Yang Hyong Sop said that Kim Jong Il made great contributions to firmly defending the country, the nation and the destiny of socialism and ensuring the peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the world with his original Songun politics.

He noted that the service personnel and people of the DPRK would surely build a paradise of the people, a reunified powerful nation on this land as desired by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, rallied close around Kim Jong Un.

He said that the DPRK government and the Korean people would as ever send invariable support and solidarity to the just cause of the Palestinian people for regaining the legitimate national rights.

Birds of a feather.

(h/t בחור טוב)

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02/29 Links Pt2: David Cameron is no friend of the truth; Americans overwhelmingly support Israel

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Anti-Zionists are fools if they think they have a monopoly on compassion

Instead, this being Israel Apartheid Week, allow me, one last time, to address the charge made frequently against anyone for whom Zionism isn’t a dirty word, that such a personage wilfully and maliciously conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in order to discredit the former.
Since I am one of the personages so charged, no matter that I have never conflated the two, I will repeat my innocence of the accusation. No, I do not say that an anti-Zionist must be an anti-Semite. Might I ever have said it? Perhaps where anti-Zionism comes to mean that Jews can go to hell in a handcart I might have thought it; but where the anti-Zionism is contingent not eschatolgical, a condemnation of a particular series of political choices and events, not an indictment of heartless expansionism lodged forever in the Jewish character, then no, I am not a conflator. Condemn away, I say.
What I do, however, maintain is that an anti-Zionist might be an anti-Semite and, in some instances, demonstrably is. Whatever its originating motives, anti-Zionism has become, for those who want to use it this way, a get-out-of-jail-free card. Anything can now be said about Jews under cover of anti-Zionism, as though, because an anti-Zionist need not be an anti-Semite, it must, by a perverse logic, follow that he never is.
What those who warn against confusing Israel-hatred with Jew-hatred must answer is why the two frequently confuse themselves. The recent alleged goings-on at Oxford and other campuses suggests that the distinct line which anti-Zionists wish to see drawn between their ideology and anti-Semitism is not respected within their own movement. Call a Jew a Zio, perpetuate the blood libel and mutter of worldwide Jew conspiracy, and you either betray the purity of intention you claim for your cause, or you demonstrate there was never such a purity in the first place.
I won’t play the game of “you suspect my motives so I suspect yours”. I simply ask of those who believe I cannot make a distinction whether the blurring they see is theirs not mine. Look into your hearts. How innocent are you?

David Cameron is no friend of the truth

Last week, in what became a widely discussed incident here in Israel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a discussion at the British Parliament, called Israeli construction in East Jerusalem “genuinely shocking”, while insisting at the same time, that he is a “great friend of Israel”.
What's genuinely shocking, is David Cameron's historical ignorance, hypocrisy and utter lack of moral clarity.
From the Islamic theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia, through the Sunni-Shia blood baths in Iraq and Syria, to all the offshoots of the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Muslim brotherhood across the entire length of North Africa, the Islamic Mideast is producing some of the most horrifying levels of rampant murderous violence and persecutions the world has seen in the 21st century.
In the 20th century, the Arab and Islamic mideast was ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population, people who had lived across many parts of the region for more than 2,000 years. Now in the 21st century, religious persecution of the remaining ancient Christian communities, along with other ancient minorities, is occurring before our eyes, as they are brutally persecuted and ethnically cleansed across many parts of the Islamic Mideast and Africa.

Gallup: Americans still overwhelmingly support Israel

Gallup released today its annual survey of American opinion regarding Israel and the Palestinians.
The survey shows that support for Israel versus the Palestinians remains near historical highs, slightly up from last year:
Americans’ views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained steady over the past year, with 62% of Americans saying their sympathies lie more with the Israelis and 15% favoring the Palestinians. About one in four continue to be neutral, including 9% who sympathize with neither side, 3% who sympathize with both, and 11% expressing no opinion.

This data shows, as I have argued frequently, that the “Israel Lobby” is the American people. That support is organic, not imposed by political donors or lobbying groups.

From The Forward:

Palestinian human rights activist’s tour of Chicago-area college campuses ended on a sour note this week, after he was heckled and threatened by students and anti-Israel protestors.

Bassem Eid, an East Jerusalem Palestinian who is the founder and director the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, cancelled his planned lecture at Northwestern University Hillel after experiencing unpleasant encounters with protestors at previous events he held at the University of Chicago and DePaul University that week.

Eid’s February 19 talk at the University of Chicago quickly turned contentious as members of the audience took issue with Eid’s opposition to boycotting Israel and with his focus on wrongdoings of the Palestinian Authority, not of Israel.

“Dr. Bassam, do not dare talk about us [Palestinians] anymore,” a member of the audience shouted toward Eid in Arabic. “You have shamed our God… you’ve shamed us, disgraced us, you are a traitor, you are a traitor, in the name of God you are a traitor… You are worse than the Jews and we will hunt you down and find you in every place, be prepared…”

Eid’s presentation, with its shift away from the Israeli occupation, also disturbed the dovish Israeli lobby, J Street.

J StreetU, the group’s campus organization, initially agreed to co-sponsor Eid’s lecture at Northwestern. But after hearing from students who attended his talk at the University of Chicago, the group withdrew its co-sponsorship. “We found some of the things he said troubling and not in line with our core values,” said Jacqueline Soria, co-president of Northwestern J StreetU. She noted Eid’s comment that Americans do not have a role in solving the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, which runs counter to J Street’s agenda of encouraging U.S. government involvement. Eid, she said, also “spoke exclusively about Palestinian responsibility” without talking Israel’s role.

Now you see how "pro-Israel" J-Street is. A belief that real peace cannot be imposed from outside is enough to drop sponsorship of an otherwise stellar human rights activist, but especially the idea that Palestinians are primarily responsible for Palestinian suffering. Even though there are scores of groups that excoriate Israel at colleges every month, J-Street U cannot stand sponsoring a lecture that doesn't.

Keep in mind that J-Street U insists that Hillel allow anti-Israel viewpoints to be hosted there, but it cannot countenance sponsoring any opinions that are not adequately anti-Israel.

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Female driving student in Gaza, 2012

Hamas has started enforcing a six month old law that forbids driving schools in Gaza to have a male instructor teach a woman without a close relative of the woman in the car (mahram.)

Owners of driving schools in the Gaza Strip have been complaining that Hamas police have told them that there must be a mahram with any girl who wants to learn and practice driving.

Jaber Radwan, head of the Driving Schools Owners Association in Gaza, said: "Hamas security asked for the presence of a mahram with every girl trained to drive a car in order to preserve the country and its citizens."

"Schools use only qualified people with good morals."

There are 56 driving schools in Gaza and women make up 20% of the students.

Ayman Shaheen, a director of a driving school, said, "One of the trainers at the school was stopped in the center of Gaza City by security and they requested the presence of mahram with the girl."

Shaheen added that "the officer informed the driver that this is forbidden, and if we do not comply they will impose sanctions to close the schools and impose fines."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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02/29 Links Pt1: PA TV Antisemitism: When fish in the sea fight, "the Jews are behind it"

From Ian:

PA TV Antisemitism: When fish in the sea fight, "the Jews are behind it"

The Palestinian Authority teaches that Jews are "evil" and the source of all bad in the world. An official PA TV host and preacher of Islam explained in his weekly education program about Islam, that as long as Jews are spreading their corruption "humanity will never live in comfort." He illustrated this with an example: "An old man told me: If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are behind it":
"Humanity will never live in comfort as long as the Jews are causing devastating corruption throughout the land. Humanity will never live in peace or fortune or tranquility as long as they are corrupting the land. An old man told me: If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are behind it. As Allah says: ''Every time they kindled the fire of war [against you], Allah extinguished it. They strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters'' (Sura 5:64)." [Official PA TV, Feb. 27, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Antisemitism is a fundamental principle of PA ideology. Antisemitic hate speech was recently voiced by PA Chairman Abbas' advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who said that throughout history Jews have represented "evil," "falsehood," "the devils" and "the satans," and accordingly Israel is "Satan's project." Islam and the Palestinians on the other hand constitute "the good" and "Allah's project":

"Jews are causing devastating corruption throughout the land" - Muslim preacher on PA TV

Isi Leibler: Despite World Challenges, Israel Is Stronger Than Ever

The same applies to Israel internationally. The US will in the long run remain Israel’s best friend and most important ally. Hopefully, the next president shall reflect the positive public support for Israel in the US and reverse the recent erosion of Israel’s international standing by restoring the close bonds between both countries.
But after our experience with the Obama administration, it is crucial that we broaden alliances. The European Union is unlikely to become a friend of Israel, but it is becoming a weaker force and we should seek to strengthen ties with individual European countries. The recent realignment with Greece and Cyprus – former adversaries – is an example. There is also the extraordinary – albeit highly delicate – positive relationship with the Russians and other East European countries.
There has also been extraordinary progress with the three major Asian countries – India, China and Japan, all of whom are today deeply engaged in trade with Israel.
Finally, the upheaval in Syria, the threat of Iran and the emergence of ISIS has brought Israel close to unspoken alliances with Egypt and some of the Gulf States including, ironically Saudi Arabia, the source of Wahhabism and the export of much Islamic extremism throughout the world. Their antisemitism remains unchanged but temporary alliances to confront the threats from the Iranians and ISIS has created strange bedfellows.
Despite the mushrooming antisemitism facing Jews in the Diaspora, especially in Europe, and notwithstanding the despicable bias the Jewish state faces at the UN and other international bodies, Israel today is in an objectively stronger position than it has ever been. But Jews and Israel must be prepared to be more flexible with their allies than has been the case hitherto. In order to be an or l’goyim – a light unto the nations – we must first ensure our own security and only then we can concentrate on tikkun ha’olam – repairing the world.

David Singer: End the West Bank Refugee Gravy Train

As of 14 September 2015, 136 of the 193 United Nations member states have been playing the PLO name-game change and recognised the “State of Palestine”.
These 136 States now need to answer two questions:
1. How can any person living in his own country still be classified as a refugee?
2. Shouldn’t the 760,000 registered Palestinian Arab refugees living in the West Bank have their refugee status revoked and be resettled and fully integrated among their fellow Palestinian Arabs?
Claiming the trappings of Statehood – whilst segregating its citizens into two different classes – is a recipe for continuing tension and future conflict.
Change the name – change the game – but be prepared to accept the consequences.

After months of negotiations, there will be a Palestinian version of the worldwide "Got Talent" TV series.

But unlike all the other editions, this one is meant to be political.

Instead of saying that this show will help highlight Palestinian Arab talent, the producers have said explicitly that "the objectives of the program are based on the primary goal to deliver a message of Palestinian talent suffering under occupation and successive crises and give them a chance to appear on the local, regional and international level."

The program is not only for Palestinians in the territories. They want Israeli Arabs (what they call "1948 Palestinians") and people of Palestinian descent who were born in other countries to participate as well, in order to maximize the propaganda to push the "right of return."

The world would have a lot more respect for Palestinians if they didn't base their entire self-image on the negation of Israel. This program proves yet again that Palestinian identity is not strong enough to stand on its own and it would not exist without its apparent mandate to demonize Israeli Jews at literally every possible opportunity.

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How to create an anti-Israel NGO (update)

EU Observer has an article about how the EU is biased - for Israel.

The piece is ridiculous, because its underlying assumption is that Israel is one of the world's worst violators of human rights. So, the author complains, there are no sanctions on Israel as there are for other countries - without mentioning that these are for things like selling arms to countries like Afghanistan and Sudan.

But perhaps more interesting than how the author twists facts is the author himself.

Martin Konecny heads the European Middle East Project (EuMEP), a Brussels-based NGO.

I had never heard of EuMEP, so I did a little research.

It has no logo.

It has no Facebook page.

It doesn't even have a Twitter account (although someone already had the @eumep account.)

It also does not have a functioning web page, even though the domain was registered nearly a year ago. Here is all that it says:

EuMEP is a new and independent project in Brussels that promotes a just and effective EU policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. EuMEP believes that the EU can and should use its leverage to induce respect for international law and help resolve the conflict. EuMEP combines analytical work and advocacy, working closely with a number of leading NGOs and experts. EuMEP supports security, freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians.

This of course means that it is meant to convince the EU to pressure Israel, and only Israel, to make unilateral concessions. No one says that Palestinians should be pressured to respect international law, even though they have violated more than their fair share and no one talks about it.

But what has EuMEP done? And who works for it?

I have not been able to find a single employee outside of Martin Konecny himself.

Yet as director of this invisible organization, Konecny has managed to get himself quoted as an expert in various articles about how important it is for the EU to act against Israel. He has also been used as an expert for meetings at the UN.

He also tweets implicitly anti-Israel cartoons:

Cartoon on NRC Handelsblad frontpage says 'Don't be afraid. He only bites Palestinians' pic.twitter.com/CoqKQVM80u
— Martin Konecny (@MartinKonecny) October 26, 2015

The DNS registration for the domain gives an address of Huidevettersstraat 165 in Brussels. The occupant at that address is an NGO called Broederlijk Delen, an anti-poverty organization that also supports "peaceful resistance" by Palestinians.

Even though EuMEP has no apparent staff, no presence and no output, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave it it $70,000 last year for "peacekeeping." And that's just the one funder I could find.

It proves the point that Bassem Eid made when he said that many will throw lots of money at any anti-Israel NGO. Especially when they try to hide their anti-Israel agenda with a message of "peace."

Konecny did not respond to my request for information about the organization.

UPDATE: Bob Knot uncovered that the cofounder of EuMEP is Martin Siepermann, who has a history of anti-Israel activities at The Rights Forum and Electronic Intifada.

UPDATE 2: This document that mentions 5 founders - some that are well-known anti-Israel activists - was discovered:

(h/t Rudi)

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Amnesty International cemented its reputation for anti-Israel bias with its 2015/2016 annual report.

Based on the number of mentions of countries in the report, Israel appears to Amnesty to be the second worst violator of human rights, besides Syria.

Here's how selected countries add up:

The fact is that the world trusts Amnesty to give an accurate portrayal of the relative severity of human rights abuses. And because of years of this kind of obscene anti-Israel bias from Amnesty and others, many in the world really believe that Israel is nearly as bad as Syria, and worse than every other country, in the area of human rights.

It is not even worth the time to disprove it. Those who actually believe that the Jewish state is this bad are either seriously lacking in basic fact checking abilities or they are de facto antisemitic. Even if you believe every one of Amnesty's charges against Israel, to compare the scale of Israel's alleged crimes against those of other countries - people killed by the authorities, amount of land taken, number of arrests, journalists detained, name your metric - Israel would not be close to the top for any of them. If you do a true comparison of how nations protecting their citizens under continuous attack protect human rights, Israel would be the best.

But we cannot trust Amnesty to actually give us facts and figures. We cannot ever expect Amnesty to offer context. That is not their stock in trade. They prefer baseless accusations, exaggeration, belief in the most outrageous and allegations and no sense of context or proportionality when they write their anti-Israel screeds.

Amnesty can do this because it is guilty of the crime it most often hurls at others - impunity. No one goes after them and when they are shown to be liars, they don't even acknowledge their errors let alone correct them.

Amnesty is not about human rights. It is about confirming the existing biases that its researchers have and then shoehorning the data to fit those biases. Their Middle East researchers made up their minds that Israel is evil long ago - now they spend all of their time pretending to prove it by fudging the facts.

And all the proof you need is in the chart above.

UPDATE: Fixed Hamas issue and added North Korea.

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